Breaking the Bronze Ceiling
Breaking the Bronze Ceiling (2021) installation view, featuring Kōtuku (1972) by Tanya Ashken and BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. BROKE (2018) by Ruth Buchanan. Courtesy of the artists and The Dowse Art Museum. Mark Tantrum Photoraphy.
Bringing together everything from bronze and ceramics to duct tape and wool, this exhibition considers the relationship between women and sculptural practice with artworks from The Dowse collection.
The bronze ceiling is a play on the well-known expression ‘the glass ceiling’, which refers to the invisible social barriers that prevent women and minorities from climbing up the corporate ladder. Today, the bronze ceiling references the lack of women represented in monuments and more recently, women making public sculpture: both issues that are being addressed by initiatives around the globe.
Extending this point of view, this exhibition breaks through the outdated assumption that sculpture is a predominantly masculine domain. In doing so, it assesses the materials woman have used; the themes they have explored, and—in keeping with The Dowse’s unique history—how these elements show a cross-over between fine art and craft practices.
As you enter the gallery, a shimmering purple curtain made of aluminium chains acts like a portal —purposefully separating Kōtuku by Tanya Ashken from the other works on display.
BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. BROKE was designed by Ruth Buchanan (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) to help visitors connect two exhibitions held at The Dowse in 2018 called Can Tame Anything and Embodied Knowledge. Guiding our movements with unexpected visual interventions, Buchanan’s architectural works challenge the way galleries operate and ask us to think about how we act within them. It feels unusual to walk through a sculpture, but in Breaking the Bronze Ceiling, it is the only way for you to see the rest of the exhibition.
Buchanan is also interested in the roles of artist, curator and designer. The Dowse worked closely with her to place her curtain—the newest work in the exhibition—in a way that highlighted Kōtuku, the oldest work in the exhibition and the first bronze purchased for our collection. This is an acknowledgement of Ashken and the path she has forged for other women artists, as well as a reference to the previous display of Kōtuku, which occupied our foyer for approximately ten years after it was purchased.
Other artists featured in this exhibition were Andrea Gardner, Ann Verdcourt, Emily Siddell, Joan Calvert, Judy McIntosh-Wilson, Kate Newby, Lisa Walker, Lonnie Hutchinson, Marte Szirmay, Mary-Louise Browne, Niki Hastings-McFall, Ruth Castle, Shelley Norton, Shona Rapira-Davies and Sue Clifford.
The Dowse Art Museum | 10 Jul – 05 Dec 2021